Time for a stiff drink

Satyagraha, Neoliberalism, CIA…we’re running out of ideas

It is perhaps a good time for newspaper editors to stop publishing any more polemical opinion pieces on the great currency transfusion (‘demonetisation’). When someone argues that people standing in lines to deposit and withdraw their own money after being compelled to do so by the government, are actually engaged in “the first economic satyagraha [using] their wisdom to articulate opposition to neoliberalism”, it is time to get off the computer and go get a really stiff drink.

It is abominable and grossly insensitive to suggest that people trying to cope with the currency shock are somehow engaged in a satyagraha. A satyagraha is above all a voluntary exercise. There is absolutely nothing voluntary about people standing outside banks and ATMs.

The subtitle of the article proclaims that “the demonetisation drive aims to cleanse the ills of neoliberalism”. That needs a sharp intake of breath and another stiff drink. Or two. The reason why there is a shadow economy is because of the absence of liberalism, neo- or paleo-. Corruption exists because of regulation, because economic freedom and liberty are stifled. If the demonetisation drive can claim to cleanse anything, it is the ills of statism, bureaucratism and the still-extant licence-permit raj. Demonetisation is a bad way to cleanse that, but that’s a different argument.

Last week The Quint had a report blaming a US aid agency and the CIA for demonetisation. Now that neoliberalism has been ritually savaged, the debate is truly over. Head to the bar, folks! They take cards.